The invention relates to a coating apparatus for applying a coating to a stream of product passing continuously through it, and more particularly to a coating apparatus that handles food products fit for human consumption including without limitation chicken, fish, seafood, pork, beef and so on. The coating material is commonly a breading material which might range in composition from a flour mixture to a coarse bread-crumb mixture. The various kinds of breading material allow inclusion of spices or flavorings within the mixture.
The coating apparatus has an infeed unit which is where the main coating activity takes place, and a drum which, when not bypassed, tumbles the coated product to knock off excess breading material as well as to ensure more even application of the coating material. The food product can be routed at the option of the operator(s) of the coating apparatus to bypass the drum. Bypassing the drum is desirable when processing "formed" food products such as beef patties or fish cakes and the like, which would disintegrate in the drum.
Further inventive aspects of this coating apparatus include improvements in the way that the drum discharges coated product onto an outflow conveyor. This is achieved by an inventive spreader. Conventionally, a drum pours its discharge onto an outflow conveyor (or the like) in a single track that occupies only a relatively narrow strip on the width of the outflow conveyor. This conventional single track is also piled such that it is generally undesirable. The prior art solution has been to station a crew of between about four to six workers at the discharge end of the drum, who manually spread out the clumped together product. It would be preferred if the outflowing product were automatically spread more evenly distributed across the whole width of the outflow conveyor. This would eliminate the need for the crew. The run-time of the food line would be more economical and would not as much be hostage to break- or meal-times of the crew, or shift-changes and the like. Hence the spreader in accordance with the invention provides a highly desirable result.
The coating apparatus also includes an inventive re-circulation system that allows such an economy measure as, the re-circulation of excess breading material. In use, much more breading material is applied by the infeed unit and tumbled in the drum than actually adheres to the product. Hence, the excess of this breading material is recovered from the discharge end of the drum, for return to and the infeed unit to mix with a fresh input stream of product to-be-coated. This re-circulation system is configured with features which comb out waste crumbs from the re-circulating breading material, distribute it proportionately between an overhead sprinkler and a main in-line infeed conveyor, with additional features of convenience for maintenance and cleaning. The prior art attempts at re-circulation systems have been characterized by screw conveyors (ie., a large screw-auger turning inside a tubular sleeve). The re-circulation system in accordance with the invention eliminates screw-conveyors and instead employs drag chain conveyors of the same type which typify the conveyor-of-choice for the rest of the invention. It is believed that screw conveyors are sufficiently susceptible to clogging or freezing when the breading material gets too wet that the elimination of screw conveyors is a substantial improvement. Unfreezing frozen screw-conveyors is a time-consuming chore, and is dreaded for good reason.
Additional aspects and objects of the invention will be apparent in connection with the discussion further below of preferred embodiments and examples.